Saturday, December 29, 2018

The Miner's Point of View

"Saviour of Highsec" is an interesting job. As one of my many duties, I read the EVEmails that people send me--or as many of them as I can. You might be surprised how often people across highsec feel the need to unburden themselves to me. I hear their confessions.

Today, I will print one of the essays I received recently. It was penned by Veekay Tehsu, who has a different perspective than that which we normally get on MinerBumping. You see, Veekay admits to having been a highsec miner--and an illegal miner at that.

Though we'll read about Veekay's history as a miner in a moment, Veekay pledged her support to the Code. If she were a bot-aspirant today, she might be too AFK to write anything (unless fueled by anguish in the immediate aftermath of a gank).

One of the common threads we see among unlicensed carebears is their faith in anarchy--but only in highsec. They say "highsec mining is free" and other nonsense along those lines, though they wouldn't dare mine illegally in the real world. Or in nullsec.

The bot miner, sadly, doesn't read as much MinerBumping as they should.

A good way of separating decent miners from bot-aspirants is that the former are invariably excited by the prospect of buying a permit, once they give it a little thought. They know that mining needs to be regulated. Also, decent miners tend to stop mining when presented with alternatives by a mentor.

Here we get a glimpse of Veekay's history. And the killmail:

The gank took place way back in 2011, in the pre-Code era. Veekay used a solo smartbombing Megathron. I wouldn't recommend trying that today, after so many nerfs to ganking.

Agent Ophidia Blackganked Veekay's Hulk after Veekay returned to the game in 2013. The mighty CODE. alliance was still relatively young at that point--but already extraordinarily powerful.

The Code is indeed a fast-acting medicine: Within hours of being ganked, Veekay assisted our Agents in killing other miners.

I'm amused whenever carebears complain about Agents using multiple clients to perform ganks. Multiboxing for the purpose of ganking has always been permitted by the Code--encouraged, even.

What can we learn from this essay? Miners, you'll only ever find happiness and fulfillment once you put down your mining lasers and open your wallets--and hearts--to the Code.

I assure you, reality is a bitch like that, I still mission against rats, dabbling with low-sec and PvP. That essay is a bit on the old side, back when I learned a new way to play EVE. I don't gank like I used to, more on that in the future......

"What can we learn from this essay? Miners, you'll only ever find happiness and fulfillment once you put down your mining lasers and open your wallets--and hearts--to the Code."

Such silliness. Having the freedom of choosing what you want to do is a key foundation of sandbox gaming. It's what makes EvE awesome. A game where everyone does exactly the same thing because they're ordered to is a game I would never consider playing.